Cloudlands Journal

Sunday, April 12, 2015

I got this idea--who knows why—to make a polka dot cake for
Easter. I saw instructions in a magazine that directed the cook to make up some
cake batter and bury donut holes of a contrasting color in the batter. Then
bake. When the layers are assembled, frosted and cut—voila! Polka dots!

So that was exciting, but my husband wanted a chocolate cake, and I wanted to put the whole project over the
top with an Easter theme.

I found a recipe in White
Trash Cooking for Resurrection Cake, which calls for dousing the finished
cake of your choice with a bourbonand butter syrup.

This seemed like a good idea.

The first red flag came when I noticed the 10 purchased donut holes seemed a bit hard as I was burying them in batter. I wondered if they'd resist the diner’s fork. Actually, they
would resist most cutlery, bandsaws included.

And as I was assembling the baked cake, I had to admit that indeed
these puppies were like rocks. I stabbed the cake multiple times with a
toothpick and poured on the syrup. Hoping everything would soften up.

I put raspberry jam
between the two layers and piled them up. More syrup, which soaked in, then I
used the mocha frosting from wonderful Dorie Greenspan’s Baking.

To maintain the Easter theme I dyed coconut green for grass,
and put colored eggs on top along with a ceramic bunny.

It was one odd cake. The donut holes were still tough, and
there weren’t enough of them to give the full polka dot effect when it was cut.
Probably they should have been soaked in the bourbon sauce before baking—treated like very big raisins.

The cake was not light and spring-like, green coconut
notwithstanding. It was lugubrious and European without the class. It was the
kind of cake you serve captives—well intentioned perhaps, but both of you just
wanting to get away.

I write about this because it’s easier to figure out what
went wrong in a cake than in a novel chapter or an art installation. Easier because there are not so many steps to analyze and also because there is less self recrimination involved. It's just a cake, soon to be a mere memory. I take the
failure less personally. And yet a botched recipe affords a good opportunity to think
about failure.

Truly, I wish I had this attitude about other creative
projects, a good number of which bomb. An artist needs to be calm in the face
of failure, because art is usually new territory. There are going to be false
starts, wrong turns, offhanded dismissals by people you longed to impress.

I am much more unrepentant about recipes. I figure that if people
want my adventurous cooking (which they seem to), they have to face the
fact that sometimes I fall off the edge.That’s what adventure is—there’s some
danger of some kind involved.

Where we got the idea that everything has to work all the
time, I don’t know. Maybe that has more to do with business and product. And we've come to expect that our soap should be wrapped, that things be predictable.

But in
the context of creativity, it’s nonsense. You cannot be creative and live in some blandly perfect, no-surprises bubble. Making, doing,
and enjoying art is about taking a conscious risk.

I’ll soak the donut holes next year, and maybe make the cake
mint chocolate. But then there’s the green coconut….

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Do the Thing You Love

We
are all challenged to use our time well. We have so many options offline and
on, that deciding what is the best use of time can be overwhelming.

I find this is particularly true of
people who have something creative on the agenda, something close to their
hearts that no one else is clamoring for them to finish: the book, the quilt,
the sculpture. When it’s just you wanting to create something, it can be very
challenging to make time for that project. This goes both for people who try to
squeeze their art projects in around the edges of work and family, without
calling themselves artists, and for those trying to grow artistic careers. It’s
hard making time for our passion.

Maybe
it’s exacerbated living in New England. I sometimes think we’re especially haunted
by the self-denial of uptight forebears. My mother always counseled doing the scut-work first to get
it out of the way before rewarding oneself with some pleasurable activity. But
that work had a way of never being finished. There was always something more she
could do to: if she’d cleaned the kitchen, she could get dinner started, or
suddenly it seemed imperative to clean out the fridge.

It’s
not so unusual to come to the end of your life without having attended to that
one elusive thing your soul called out for you to do.

My
mother’s daughter, I’ve also tried to use my creative pursuits as a reward. Do
your taxes, then you can work on the
novel or on designing that blouse, or on writing that short story. But somehow
that reward always stayed slightly out of reach. I’d slog through my chores--which
seemed to take forever-- and then it would be time to pick up kids, or make
dinner or collapse into bed, exhausted.

On
the way into town to do errands today, I opened the topic up with my husband.

His answer was immediate and
emphatic: pay yourself first. Do the thing you want to do. The resulting joy
will give you energy to power through the chores in 1/3 the time you’d
otherwise take. You’ll have made progress on something important, which will
give you confidence.

What’s more, he said, following the
Pay Yourself First plan simplifies all the other decision making you have to
do. Things become clearer to you because you have not lied to yourself about
what really needs attention. You also save yourself and those around you a lot
of frustration. You are, in short, a happy camper.

This feels so weird and new, it’s
going to take a leap of faith, then some practice, to achieve. But I think it’s
worth a shot.

A Buddhist saying pops into mind: There is no path to happiness. Happiness is
the path.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

The secret to endurance is finding
a way to keep the embers of progress alive somehow.
“Progress” can be anything that inches you toward your goal. “Progress” could
be just surviving. Living to take another breath, another step.

As the mother of small children, I
counted it a huge accomplishment to put up a new shelf. Later, I would get up at midnight to
write for two undisturbed hours, and considered myself lucky.

Keeping creativity alive sustains
hope. So when I look back on this long winter at some of my wackier projects,
like making dog biscuits (“Banana Bones”) from scratch or découpaging
my clogs, I see them as placeholders for projects that required more focus and
concentration than I could summon at the time.

Similarly, when my husband was
taking care of his ailing mother, he didn’t have the concentration to read, let
alone write, but he could paint. Even mixing colors was enormously refreshing.

I also believe in a good dollop of
magical thinking.

Take
Cinderella, who has earned the scorn of people who consider the story demeaning
to women. Are we really supposed to sit around scrubbing floors, waiting for
some prince to rescue us? That interpretation is to take the prince fantasy
literally, and deplore it. But I see it as a story about endurance.

Sometimes, especially as children in
confusing and frightening circumstances, the best we can do is endure. The grown-ups are either hostile or clueless, our
peers are preoccupied or actively malevolent, the situation seems hopeless. And
so we put one foot in front of the other in a dreary slog from one day to the
next.

I find there’s a certain nobility
in this, however humble, in just keeping on, without even knowing why.

Those of us who haven’t suffered
these hardships should be very careful about denouncing the dreams, however
unrealistic, that sustain people who are in trouble.

I had dinner with a friend the
other night who disparaged magical thinking. She went on at some length about
how Americans were particularly prone to the idea that anything is possible, as
well as to its corollary, that technology can fix anything. And what rubbish it
all was.

Although I agreed that we can get
carried way with pipedreams, it made me uncomfortable, thinking, first of all, If you only knew how much I believe in
second chances, miracles, & happy endings!

But as a nation, we decided to walk
on the moon (what a nutty idea!) and then did
it.Diana Nyad took six attempts
to swim from Cuba to Florida, (what about the jellyfish, and throwing up all
the time?) and did it—at 64.

And about all our failures to reach
our goals? Dreaming and trying gets you further than not dreaming.

I see it as being
like moving my back foot from the deep lunge of the yoga Sun Salutation forward
until it’s up between my hands. If I imagine that foot 18” above my hands, I
can get it between them. If I only imagine getting my foot between my hands, I
fall 12” short.

So dream on,
blow on the embers, give yourself credit for small improvements. Despite my
photo of the Terrible Pile of Snow outside my window, I know spring is coming.
We heard a redwing blackbird yesterday. Crazy
bird! What are you thinking? It’s 25 degrees!

Sunday, January 26, 2014

I’m antsy, sitting here thinking of all the things I would
rather do than revising this novel.

For instance:

1. I would like to go to the movies. An outing! But: It’s a 40 minute drive to the nearest
movie theater and my husband’s standards are way higher than mine. He doesn’t
want to see what’s playing and I don’t want to go alone—that would be way too
self-indulgent.

2. I could go for an x-c ski. Though the wind chill has to be at least -5, there’s a bare covering of
snow.

3. I could make a carrot cake! We have carrots raisins and
cream cheese. No. No. No.

4. I could catch up on filing. Oh Please. That’s like your mother suggesting you clean your room when
you’re bored.

5. I could make a cover for the leather couch that is
beginning to show claw marks from cats springing and having to grab hold or
slide off.It would be Progress.
Besides, that polar fleece I ordered just came in, and it would be a cinch to
do. Marshall would be very happy. Family Happiness is important.

6. I could research Flash fiction venues. Also Progress. But I dread it. There’s the fun of writing
and then there’s getting ready for the blind date of submission. Progress, I
guess, but nerve wracking. Didn’t Eleanor Roosevelt say that you should do
something you’re afraid of every day? Yeah, but….

7.I could file
my nails. They’re a mess. How am I supposed to concentrate with nails like
these?

8. I could get wood for the stove. This would definitely be
Progress, plus a little exercise.

9. Speaking of which, I could do my exercises a workout with
Dr. Oz and two women who’ve lost tons of weight doing hundreds of pushups,
smiling all the while.

10. I could work on Flash fiction. Somehow those revisions
are more fun than the novel’s. Why is that? Because they’re 500-1000 words. I
write when I get an idea, going from one piece to another. I don’t push.

11. I could read The
Signature of All Things. I started the first page and it’s wonderful. It’s
due in only two weeks. I did promise myself I’d get a lot of reading in this
weekend. Other people are waiting for it at the library. It would be very
inconsiderate to make them wait by not reading it right away, even though it
was supposed to be the reward for revising the novel. But:
did Elizabeth Gilbert get her 499 page novel written by goofing off?

12. I could do laundry. Progress, But: see #4.

13. I could start some sprouts—that would be an excellent
January project.It’s also
healthy, though not immediately so. Progress, still.

14. I could answer the phone. Oh yippee! But it’s not for me.

15. Or,

I could just break down and do the revision.

P.S. Which I did. Feels good to have done it.

So if you list all the things you’d rather be doing—with
every bit of flakey rationale, maybe you can embarrass yourself into doing the task
you’ve been avoiding.

Monday, November 4, 2013

As
arts education continues to suffer terrible cuts, I’m constantly looking for
proofs that the arts are an important component of anyone’s education. Many
educators still tend to see the arts as frivolous, and STEM subjects as being the
real, demonstrable engines of progress.

One
important thing the arts teach is the value of practice. Our musician friend,
Nate Hundemann, recalls starting music in junior high, and beingterrible at it. But over the ensuing
months and years, he learned that practice is indeed transformative. For with
diligent practice, he became a very good musician indeed. Arts education
teaches us that practice is the muscle of transformation.

Some people never learn that.
Having been taught that talent is paramount, many people give up on subjects
that intrigue them merely because they aren’t yet good at them. That giving up is the source of a lot of despair,
especially later on in life.

We over-value early genius but are
terrible at nurturing it. There’s this insidious idea that genius flowers
without practice, that being naturally good at something is all, and that
talent alone will take you where you want to go.

Practice can seem quite mysterious
to the novice—how will scales help you play real music? Sometimes you just have
to trust and do the work.

A few months ago, I attended an
unusual performance in which a young violinist, Rafael Rondeau, played five
different instruments—violins and violas—to demonstrate each instrument’s
voice. They were all hand made by a local luthier, Doug Cox.

I’m not a musician, so I blithely thought this should be as
easy as picking up a story and reading it aloud. It was actually more like
speed dating —in front of an audience.

You can’t just pick up an
instrument, scrape away, and expect it to sound great. You have to get
acquainted and that takes practice. He did practice, on his own violin
beforehand, trying out pieces that might highlight each instrument’s unique
voice. But it was a gamble. That Rafael agreed to perform in this manner, without
prior introduction to each instrument, is testimony to his diligence, skill,
and let’s face it, bravery.

I used to fling myself into new
pursuits without warm-up. I was fueled byimpatience, curiosity and a vast ignorance that may have looked like overconfidence,
even arrogance. I was not at all assured of success, though. More often than
not, it was a bruising way to go about new challenges.

It began to occur to me that
perhaps the fling n’ flail method could be improved upon. I like success, and
have noticed that planning well increases one’s chances of achieving it.

Perhaps you could say that practice
is a kind of blind planning, whose endpoint, mastery, isn’t always visible from
where you are. Not very glamorous, but it’s essential.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Everyone
talks about what a waste of time Facebook is. As a new addict, I have been
sheepishly agreeing, as I consider the time I’ve spent ogling beautiful photos
of New England foliage, or signing petitions about the latest political
outrage.

But
as I really think about it, I’m less sure it’s such a waste.

A few days ago, I came upon a
wonderful clip from the movie, Girl
Rising, that showed young girls getting ready to go to school all over the
world. It was so uplifting, so lovely and modest, but at the same time, so important, I was in tears. I vowed to
watch it every morning for a month, just to see where all that emotion could
go, and how I could put it to good use.

Let’s be clear: I am a privileged
middle-aged woman with an education, whose family is loving and stable, whose
health is good. I am beyond fortunate, and am very grateful. So I see myself at
one end of the female spectrum, being able to help women at the other end. Figuring
out what form that help should take is a little more involved.

Facebook and the Internet inundate
you with good causes. It doesn’t take long to feel overwhelmed. Or that
whatever you contribute will go toward running another incendiary ad or sending
you address labels as a “guilt gift” to get you to send in more money.

That is why developing a personal
mission statement can be very useful. Does this sound too anal-retentive? If
you write a good one, it will help you sort through requests for your time and
money, work opportunities, even hobbies. You will not be forever running around willy-nilly.

That very moving one and a half
minute segment of film is helping me coalesce such a statement.

Here’s the other part. After a lot
of soul searching, I’ve discovered that what I really want to get done while
visiting this planet is to write. Fiction, mostly. As someone raised (albeit
gently) in a do-gooder family, in earnest, hippie states and cultures (Vermont
in the 60’s, Berkeley in the 70’s; you’ll have to trust me regarding the
former) it took me a long time to come to grips with wanting to do something
so, well, frivolous.

For some reason, I always separated
Service to Humanity from Art.

I know some of you will be taking
to your beds with cold compresses and/or bottles of gin after discovering how
truly dippy your little friend has turned out to be. I mean, really: isn’t To Kill A Mockingbird a service? Or The Grapes of Wrath? Of course they are. Perhaps, on a more subtle
level, so are the Stephanie Plum murder mysteries by Janet Evanovich. But I
suspect my talents and proclivities are more in the Evanovich than in the Lee
or Steinbeck camps.

Funny thing is, I’m writing a novel
about a woman who’s been in a mental hospital for 20 years. Because of
defunding, she’s being let out and must figure out the world. The woman’s name
is Maria.

My saintly readers have just given
me comments to the effect that what I thought was a pretty smokin’ second or
third draft, is, in fact, a terrific first
draft. And part of what I now have to do is to clarify what Maria (who is all
over the map about all sorts of things) wants.
She is not just there to be entertaining and kooky. This last bit they were too
polite to say. I discovered it all by myself.

Seeing the clip from Girl Rising reminded me to take Maria
more seriously. Perhaps writing fiction
and helping don’t have to be at odds.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

I have put in 10,000 hours on writing—and then some. I may
be slow writing royalty, having spent 30 plus years learning how to do it. I’ve
published freelance nonfiction,do
freelance pieces for radio, and am now working on fiction, which I’ve also
taken my time to learn. All I can say is that it’s been a privilege.

It seems fairly straightforward. If you are doing what you
love, you will not resent the time it takes to master your craft.

Every once in awhile, though, I come across some bright
young MFA whose life has been a beeline from one success to the next, and I
wonder: Could I have been a teeny bit more efficient? Could my learning curve
have been shortened by a couple of decades?

Here are a few things I have learned.

Read your work.
Don’t just write for a year and then return to read what you have done. Which I
did. It is a brutal shock to learn that the brilliant prose you remember having
put down is actually closer to gibberish.

Read your work aloud.
It is a brilliant and cheap way to edit out pomposity and boring asides. No
audience necessary at first.

Let other people read
your work. You have to choose your victim carefully. You want someone who’s
insightful, sympathetic but also tough, who is not out to sabotage your desire
to write just because you happen to write badly (which I used to do—so badly, I
was afraid to show my work). A saint, in short, who also has great taste and is
humble enough to know that we all must start somewhere, and wise enough to know
that some very wonderful writers have started way, way behind the starting line. (If you don’t believe me, read Eugene
O’Neill’s earliest work).

To edit, start by
cutting out the boring parts. This is Amy Hempel’s advice and it remains
the best I’ve come across. And as you reread your work repeatedly, more of it
will bore you. The parts that you secretly questioned as not quite belonging begin to lie there, on
the eighth time through, like road kill. Unload them.

Read what you love.
There are masters in every genre. Powerhouse agent, Alexandra Machinist, once
described her very serious, very well-educated German grandfather as emerging
from his study to announce, “Georgette Heyer iss a geniuss!”

Oh, yes, and write
every day. Start with three longhand pages—the Morning Pages as described
by Julia Cameron--to get through the venting, awfulizingand snarking. Longhand frees up one’s
mind, and is, in my experience, a good cure for writer’s block. It’s also a
sort of quotidian magic—by the third page, a new idea, a good phrase, something pops out. And sometimes it’s an
idea that will take you wonderful places.